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David Peters is chairing a session at the Global Symposium on strategies to improve the delivery of health services in developing countries. The session is built around a book that he wrote with some colleagues last year.* Their work suggests that decision makers need better information from both implementation experience and research evidence in order to make more informed decisions. Researchers can help by not only focusing on robust methods to provide traditional evidence on what can work in research settings, but by using methods that can contribute information and knowledge on implementation as part of a process of institutional development and learning.

Global Health Magazine mentioned the book in an article by Linda P. Fried and Lynn P. Freidman, "Chasing goals rather than solving problems?" They argue that global goals and targets have been set without reference to crucial aspects of country context that influence change, and without acknowledging the varying pace of change that is possible across different settings with different starting points. This profoundly effects implementation and our progress toward global targets.